prebabelfandomcom-20200215-history
About tests for PreBabel
Day thirty -- about tests for PreBabel. Question -- "sangi39" -- Also, on the note of "tests", I wasn't very impressed by one of the proposals. IIRC, it was something along the lines of 3 people who didn't know any Chinese (assuming Standard Written Mandarin here), 3 people who did know Chinese and 3 people with an intermediate grasp of Chinese alongside a control group of 3 physicists, all of whom would speak the same language, IIRC this case it was General American English. Answer -- This "test" refers to a test which was submitted to Dr. Steven B. Sample (the President of USC, University of Southern California Los Angeles), and it was given to Dr. Howard Gillman, Dean, College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, USC. The details are available at http://www.chinese-etymology.com/interplay.php Question -- from "sangi39" -- After this test the scale would have to be increased to include people speaking around 5 different languages, say English, Spanish, Russian, German and French, from different geographical regions within those languages areas and from different socioeconomic backgrounds, so say 5 people each from each background per 5% of the area where those languages are spoken all of which have no abilities in Mandarin and no previous experience trying to read it. This should be done twice, once through PB and once through a more traditional method meaning you'd need two test groups of this size. Answer --Sure, we can always design a better test plan. Test is the final say for any testable issue. Question -- from "sangi39" -- I'm not sure, but this kind of test would give around several thousand results and since PB seems more to be an intended teaching option rather than a true universal language, it would likely be used with several thousand people, so it would be a mini-test of its final and intended use across linguistic, social, economic and cultural areas. Answer -- Seemingly, the issue of "universal language" and the issue of "how easy to learn a given language" are not related. Yet, I made a link between them with my own choice. Even while a universal language can be constructed theoretically, it will be practically useless if it is too hard to learn it. Thus, I made two criteria for PreBabel. (please visit, http://www.prebabel.info/bab001.htm ), 1. Criterion one (C1): Its scope and capacity must be in par, at least, with one natural language. 2. Criterion two (C2): It must be mastered to a literacy level similar to the language skill of a 12th grader on his/her mother language by an average person in 100 days with 3 hours of study a day, that is, a total of 300 hours of study. The C2 is not a statement but is a self imposed criterion. If PreBabel fails to meet C2, it has failed by definition even while it is, in fact, a universal language. Thus, I am here to defend neither Tienzen nor PreBabel. I am here to request everyone's help to check out these two criteria (C1 and C2). If anyone who is able to show that the PreBabel is able to meet neither C1 nor C2, he has done me a great favor, giving me a great gift which I was unable to get myself. As soon as I know that where is the problem, I am very confident that I can fix and repair it. That is, a bad PreBabel will become a good one. Yet, most of you did not truly study my works, neither about PreBabel nor about PB (Chinese) which I published two books. Chinese Word Roots and Grammar (US copyright # TX 6-514-465) Chinese Etymology (US copyright # TX 6-917-909) I was very surprised with the news that Trailsend knows almost nothing about my works while he argued from all directions in his posts. Regardless of whether my PreBabel is true or not, it is a very important issue. If it is true, not only can thousands hours of kid's life be used to learn other things but it has a supreme political importance. Which country can PreBabelized her language first, her language will eventually become the universal language of the world, with linguistic force, not with political power. Signature -- PreBabel is the true universal language, it is available at http://www.prebabel.info